Menard Auto Buggy - Remington Carriage Museum - Cardston, Alberta
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T0SHEA
N 49° 11.617 W 113° 18.130
12U E 332273 N 5451530
The Remington Carriage Museum houses the largest collection of horse drawn vehicles in North America with over 270 carriages, buggies, wagons and sleighs.
Waymark Code: WMGAMY
Location: Alberta, Canada
Date Posted: 02/06/2013
Views: 2
This is the one motorised mode of transportation in the collection at the Remington Carriage Museum. The purpose is to include a transitional vehicle, between the horse drawn carriage and the automobile. Given that this is an "Auto Buggy" and looks much like a horse drawn buggy, it fits the bill perfectly.
Built by the Windsor Carriage and Wagon Works in Windsor, Ontario in about 1908, this little buggy is powered by a 10 HP, 2 cylinder air cooled engine. Additionally, it had an innovative continuously variable transmission and could achieve a top speed of 20 MPH.
Windsor Carriage, as did all manufacturers, was required to pay a patent royalty on this buggy until the patent was broken by none other than Henry Ford in 1911.
A bit about the Menard, from: (
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"Blacksmith and prominent wagon-maker Moise L. Menard (later mayor of Riverside), a native of Belle River, saw that the automobile was the coming thing. He arranged for M.B. Covert of Detroit to design a car that he could manufacture at his wagon works.
The result was the 'Menard Auto Buggy', a Highwheeler passenger vehicle with a two-cylinder, opposed, air-cooled engine which he built for two years. Highwheeler's were automobiles with oversized tires, which were in vogue around this time. These early Menard vehicles, crudely made but durable, were manufactured completely in Windsor rather than assembled from imported parts.
The Menard was well built and enjoyed good sales as far away as the Prairies and Quebec. In 1910 the company changed its name to The Menard Auto Buggy Co., and added a new 16 h.p. water-cooled engine, for the reasonable price of $625. But with growing competition and fading popularity of the Highwheeler, Menard switched over to the manufacture of trucks.
Menard produced a series of trucks, from one-ton to three-and-a-half ton models. in 1916 Menard built an aerial ladder fire truck for the Walkerville fire department.
Menard sold out to the Maple Leaf Manufacturing Co. of Montreal in 1920 and entered public life. He became mayor of Riverside in 1923 - 1924 and died in 1946."
Coordinates given are for the entrance to the museum.
Check out this great museum here: (
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